Sarah Orne Jewett
When I was knee deep in the 19th century masculine American dream in college reading guys like Whitman, Thoreau, Melville, Hawthorne, Howells, James, Dreiser, Norris, and Crane (all of whom I love, by the way…well, except James. I still hate him), along came Sarah Orne Jewett and The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896). What a breath of fresh air this novel was.
This novel is the other side, the other point of view on the masculine American dread, narrating as it does the stories of the wives these men left behind at home on their quests. And these stories are even more gripping.